Nonreversible immobilization of water-borne plutonium onto self-assembled adlayers of silanized humic materials.

The objective was to study plutonium partitioning between immobile and mobile humic materials at the water-solid interfaces. Immobilization of the humic materials on solid supports was performed in situ using self-adhesive silanized humic derivatives. The presence of the humic adlayers on solid supports was shown to significantly enhance Pu sorption and its retention under both steady state and dynamic conditions.

Differential expression and ligand binding indicate alternative functions for zebrafish polymeric immunoglobulin receptor (pIgR) and a family of pIgR-like (PIGRL) proteins.

The polymeric immunoglobulin (Ig) receptor (pIgR) is an integral transmembrane glycoprotein that plays an important role in the mammalian immune response by transporting soluble polymeric Igs across mucosal epithelial cells. Single pIgR genes, which are expressed in lymphoid organs including mucosal tissues, have been identified in several teleost species. A single pigr gene has been identified on zebrafish chromosome 2 along with a large multigene family consisting of 29 pigr-like (PIGRL) genes.

Development and characterization of anti-nitr9 antibodies.

The novel immune-type receptors (NITRs), which have been described in numerous bony fish species, are encoded by multigene families of inhibitory and activating receptors and are predicted to be functional orthologs to the mammalian natural killer cell receptors (NKRs). Within the zebrafish NITR family, nitr9 is the only gene predicted to encode an activating receptor. However, alternative RNA splicing generates three distinct nitr9 transcripts, each of which encodes a different isoform.